Tangled Web

A mustard yellow Hay Festival Press book containing two short stories by Doris Lessing: 'A More Than Usually Tangled Web' and 'My Black Calf'.

Two elderly women sat under a tree, the table between them covered by their trays. They were in the gardens of a tearoom in Dorset. The tray in front of one was plundered, but the other not touched. The garden was crowded, but mostly with families; this was not a place the young were likely to frequent, but twenty paces away sat an untidy middle-aged woman and a very pretty girl, the daughter and grand-daughter of the woman without an appetite. Why were they not sitting with the others?